Field Oriented Control (FOC) of brushless wound field synchronous machines requires position information for the transformations into and out of the d-q reference frame. Research activities surrounding position sensorless field oriented control have produced several inventive solutions. For instance, Jansen et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 5,585,709) describes a carrier injection sensorless (CIS) method of estimating the position and velocity of the rotor of a dynamoelectric machine. Most recently, Markunas et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 6,967,461) has enhanced the Jansen et al. CIS method applied to wound field synchronous machines. Specifically, Markunas et al. uses the rotating rectifier diode in the rotor field winding circuitry to determine North-South pole information by interrogating the machine from the inverter on the main armature terminals of the machine using the CIS method. Unfortunately, the CIS method places an increased peak current carrying burden on the insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) switches that typically comprise the machine inverter.